1. Field
This disclosure is generally related to transmitting data over an active telephone connection. More specifically, this disclosure is related to devices that participate in interactive calls by exchanging data over a voice communication channel that also carries voice signals.
2. Related Art
Telephone systems were invented in the late nineteenth century as a way to communicate a human voice to a person at a remote location. The invention of the telephone has allowed friends and relatives to keep in close contact, and has allowed businessmen to provide services or conduct business with others, regardless of how far apart they are from each other.
Telephone-related technologies have evolved significantly since their invention. Nowadays, many people rely on a portable mobile phone (e.g., a smartphone) as their primary connection to a telephone network. However, to be able to handle a large population of mobile phones with an active telephone connection, mobile phone carriers implement a cellular phone network that requires a mobile phone to compress voice information before transmitting it across the network. For example, a mobile phone may compress the sound detected in a way that removes white-noise information and other sounds that don't resemble a human voice, while preserving sounds that do resemble a human voice. When a remote mobile phone receives the compressed information, the remote mobile phone decompresses the voice information to reproduce as much of the original voice-like sound as possible.
However, compressing the detected sounds reduces the amount of information that can be transferred over the telephone connection. If two people are talking over the telephone connection and wish to share data with each other, they have to rely on a separate data connection to exchange their data. For example, they may each be in front of a computer with Internet access, or they may use a separate dedicated data channel accessible via their smartphone to exchange their data. Unfortunately a user has to manually navigate through separate applications on his mobile phone (e.g., an email client or a Web browser) to access the desired information, which can be quite difficult given the limits of the user interface on the small telephone device. Also many mobile phones do not allow a data path while a voice call is in progress, which can require a person to terminate the telephone connection before exchanging data.